And (thanks to Black Electorate.com for the next two story links) The Jerusalem Postwrites: "A Belgian-Dutch Islamic political organization, the Arab European League, posted anti-Jewish cartoonson its Web site on Saturday in response to the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that appeared in Danish papers last year and offended many Muslims, unleashing violent demonstrations around the Islamic world."

On a note of sobering sanity, Abdel-Rahman Hussein writes in Dar al-Hayat: "[I]f we expect Westerners to not tar all Muslims with the 'terrorist' moniker, we should do the same. Denmark and the Danish people should not be held accountable for the decision of a newspaper to publish such a thing.Danish embassies and Consulates in the Middle East should not be torched to the ground; Danish people in the Middle East should not feel unsafe.

"This is exactly the sort of reaction we fear when an attack occurs on Western soil. How will they view Muslims living in that particular country? Will these Muslims be safe in the wake of such attacks? If we do not want to be accused of the double standards we often feel is rampart in the West then we should take stock of how we react.

"Violence is not an appropriate response, no matter how high feelings might run, especially because this violence is directed towards people who were not involved, and may have even been as offended as Muslims in the matter. It is easy to generalize for the sake of simplicity but care must be taken if people's safety is at risk. You do not lash out at one man for the folly of another."

Comments

Firstly, I would say that I think that the Jesus pictures ought to be published so that they can be examined along with the Mohhamed cartoons.

I have upheld that the published cartoons were only offensive to those who have a fairly ignorant view of how Islam came into being and how Arabia and many other countries came to be Muslim. Therefore, if the pictures of Jesus and the Resurrection were of a similar nature (a means of proviking critical thought about Christianity and it's history) then the daily is indeed being hypocritical to not publish the pieces.

That said, If the cartoons of Jesus were in the same poor taste as the unpublished cartoons, then I would say that the paper was not hypocritical since it did censor that which it deemed unneccesarily offensive.

overall,I think the recent actions of various Muslims around the world has only served to prove the stated (if not only) intent of the paper: people are scared of Muslims and therefore censor themselves.